Established in 1971, the Political Science Reviewer has served for more than a half century as a venue for political theory and philosophy that resists disciplinary dogmas and novelties. We endeavor to give voice to a range of scholars and to put these voices into traditional conversation with each other. Authors are encouraged to submit both articles and symposium ideas.
School of Economic Thought and Leadership
Rebecca LeMoine's Plato's Caves: The Liberating Sting of Cultural Diversity
This symposium reflects on Plato's Caves: The Liberating Sting of Cultural Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2020) by Rebecca LeMoine. In this wonderful book, LeMoine pushes back against the popular and scholarly narrative the Plato was hostile to foreigners. Far from exhibiting hostility to foreigners, LeMoine argues that Plato was a friend of cultural diversity. Through her examination of the Republic, the Menexenus, the Laws, and the Phaedrus, LeMoine shows that Plato believed foreigners play a role similar to that of Socrates: the role of gadfly. Foreigners can be gadflies because every citizen lives in a polity that shares the same basic features of the cave, Plato's famous allegory in the Republic. This means that when we interact with someone raised in a different "cave," we are faced with the possibility of another way of life and hence with the occasion to reflect on our own conception of truth, beauty, and goodness.
Plato, Socrates, cultural diversity, foreigners, Socratic gadfly
Copyright (c) 2025 The Political Science Reviewer
Editor's Note: Christian Political Thought
Copyright (c) 2026 The Political Science Reviewer
This essay reclaims Mary Wollstonecraft as a deeply religious thinker whose defense of women’s rational capacity corrects modernity’s flawed, disembodied notion of reason and its damaging effects on views of women. Echoing Pope Benedict XVI’s critique of such rationality, I argue that the “masculine” reason often criticized by modern feminists is actually an erroneous conception of reason itself—one Wollstonecraft challenged more fundamentally than later feminists. Contrary to the common portrayal of Wollstonecraft as a secular Enlightenment radical, and building on my 2021 book The Rights of Women, I show she was a religiously inspired moral thinker. Her ideas rest on the biblical truth that women and men are equally rational beings made in God’s image, destined for eternal communion with Him. I trace depictions of women’s rationality from Christine de Pizan’s early fifteenth-century pre-Reformation defense through the errors of Catholic nominalism, Reformation voluntarism, and Enlightenment abstraction. Wollstonecraft used available intellectual resources to reject voluntarist views of divine, political, and patriarchal authority. Instead, she reclaimed a richer, authoritative reason grounded in theological anthropology, emphasizing moral formation and personal virtue. Her vision for women prioritizes virtuous self-governance, guided by good parents, teachers, and books. This integrates—albeit imperfectly—women’s rational capacities with their embodied duties, especially motherhood. Though theologically distinct from Benedict’s Catholic synthesis of faith and reason, body and soul, Wollstonecraft’s virtue-centered framework corrects modern feminism’s liberal-autonomy models. It affirms women’s full humanity and rationality, honors embodied sexual difference, and elevates the private and public value of caregiving.
Copyright (c) 2025 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
Libertarians generally trace their intellectual lineage to John Locke, and a growing number of prominent conservatives in effect agree with their reading. Locke, however, grants several important broad powers to the state that go well beyond what any libertarian would countenance. The Lockean and libertarian political projects are also animated by different ends. Libertarians aim to emancipate the individual from coercive strictures, whereas Locke aims to preserve mankind, and he thus recognizes binding positive duties to prevent the needless deaths of others. Locke does, however, unwittingly invite the libertarian reinterpretation of his politics. There is an undeniable libertarian flavor to his thought. Ultimately, libertarianism is a likely result of Lockeanism that exploits tensions in Locke’s thought to produce a theory much more radical in its political implications.
Harvey C. Mansfield's Machiavelli's Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World
Did Alexander Hamilton Adopt the New “Political Science” Proposed by Charles de Montesquieu and David Hume?
Alexander Hamilton is frequently labeled an Enlightenment figure influenced primarily by David Hume and Charles de Montesquieu. This paper contends that his political thought remained firmly rooted in the Aristotelian-Ciceronian-Christian tradition. Hamilton rejected the modern “new political science” that sought to secure liberty and welfare through institutional mechanisms alone, without virtuous rulers. Though engaging Montesquieu’s separation of powers, he and Madison advocated only a flexible, partial blending consistent with the classical mixed regime. Against Hume’s view of men as knaves whose passions must be mechanically balanced in a self-regulating system, Hamilton insisted reason must govern passions, virtue is indispensable, and government exists to constrain passions toward reason and justice. The end of politics, for Hamilton, was the common good—the safety and non-hedonistic happiness of the people—with justice and virtue as central aims. Law was an ordinance of reason, not will; judges applied objective natural law, and the Constitution itself was fundamental law binding even majorities. Hamilton’s framework thus reveals profound continuity with classical and Christian sources rather than the modern philosophic innovations of Hume and Montesquieu.
Civic Education for the Republic--If You Can Keep It
As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Americans should be concerned about the state of their republic. Using ideas from The Federalist, Irving Babbitt, René Girard, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, this article argues that decreasing civic knowledge is part of a broader deterioration of America’s unwritten constitution. The decline of the unwritten constitution—that is, America’s turn away from the wisdom embedded in historical customs, social structures, and political practices—is a serious problem that undermines the functioning of the written constitution, weakens citizen character formation, and erodes the norms and restraints that defuse social conflicts and limit political violence. This article concludes by claiming the successful mending of America’s unwritten constitution will depend, to a significant degree, on developing a form of civic education that shapes the minds and souls of citizens in ways that equip them to keep the republic.
Recovering the Metaphysics of Common Sense: Thomas Reid, the Scottish Philosophy, and American Higher Education
This article argues for recovering Thomas Reid’s Scottish Common Sense philosophy as an antidote to critical theory in contemporary American higher education. From the Revolution to the Civil War, Common Sense realism—led by John Witherspoon and James McCosh—formed an orthodoxy in colleges like Princeton, Harvard, and Brown, rejecting the “ideal theory” of René Descartes, John Locke, and David Hume in favor of direct perception, self-evident first principles, and a divinely ordered reality. Critical theory, rooted in Herbert Marcuse’s negative thinking, echoes ideal theory’s skepticism by reducing truth to power and emancipation. Common Sense metaphysics can counter this by refocusing on the healthy human condition, the whole person, and objective excellence, restoring shared discourse for self-government. The article recommends incorporating natural theology, moral philosophy, and rhetoric into new classical and civic education institutes.
This paper argues that physical fitness, historically central to classical education, is underemphasized in the modern revival of classical and civic education, allowing vitalist movements to exploit this gap. Despite this, there remain resources for democratic civic educators to emphasize physical excellence in civic education. Drawing on Xenophon’s Memorabilia, this paper examines Socrates’ dialogue with Epigenes, exploring how physical fitness is linked to both duties of citizenship and individual well-being, making it both a personal and a civic virtue. Socrates argues that fitness not only prepares citizens for potential martial demands but also enhances intellectual and personal excellence, countering the notion that it is merely a professional athlete’s concern. The paper then traces the historical role of physical education in American civic life, from the robust demands of colonial survival to formalized programs like Eisenhower’s President’s Council on Youth Fitness. However, post-World War II shifts toward sedentary lifestyles and egalitarian fitness policies, such as the Clinton and Obama administrations’ focus on inclusive participation over excellence, have coincided with declining national fitness levels. I then critique this “democratization” of fitness standards, suggesting it may contribute to, or at least fail to remedy, widespread physical decline, as evidenced by rising obesity rates and weakened military standards. I conclude by advocating for reintegrating physical education into civic education to foster democratic virtues, and urge a reevaluation of the intellectual and curricular role of physical excellence.
This article argues that the character of Don Quixote from Miguel de Cervantes’s eponymous masterpiece can be interpreted as a model civic educator. Challenging the view of Don Quixote as merely a deluded fool, the article positions him as a tragicomic exemplar of moral imagination and principled dissent, one who practices civic ideals even when they appear absurd or out of step with reality. Through a close reading of famous episodes across both parts of Cervantes’s novel, this essay develops a concept I call civic quixotism: a form of civic engagement that resists the flattening effects of procedural rationality and affirms the unconventional wisdom in marginalized ways of knowing. Don Quixote’s madness, I argue, depicts a pedagogical stance that inspires ethical transformation in those around him—especially his squire, Sancho Panza, who subsequently inspires a transformation in his master. Don Quixote’s publicity is constitutive to this pedagogy: it is because he acts in the open, before witnesses who can observe, evaluate, and be changed by his example, that his idealism becomes civic rather than merely private. In contrast to dominant trends in civic education that prioritize critique or procedural knowledge, civic quixotism proposes a pedagogy of formation through example—one that embraces the ideals of citizenship precisely where they are most needed, in an environment unfamiliar with or openly hostile to them.
Tocquevillean Reflective Patriotism, Civics, and Perpetuating the American Republic
Abstract: For both intellectual and civic reasons, including America’s current crisis of civic culture and civic order, civic educators must recover the rational, discursive mode of patriotism Tocqueville articulated. His complex argument in Democracy in America about our unique “reflective patriotism,” sustaining the new democratic republic, deserves scholarly discussion and should guide reforms to K–12 and higher education teaching. Americans of the 1830s blended gratitude for their country with insistence on rational debate about both ideals and practical governance. The elements of reflective patriotism range from a Christian-civic foundation to the rational self-interest in committing to civic duties, and to formal schooling. Subsequent changes in American culture, including intellectual and academic transformations, pose challenges to renewing elements of a considered, discursive patriotism, but the grave condition of our civic order and the failure of the democracy-education approach descended from Dewey recommend that educators consider their role in supporting a healthier civic culture.
The Symbiosis of Political Form and Moral Character:
The relationship between political forms and character is symbiotic. Forms assume a certain character type that can function within their limits and constraints. Forms also shape character as individuals are compelled to conform to them. Conformity, however, depends on a willingness to abide by forms that can never fully account for circumstances. Consequently, in some circumstances it is necessary for individuals to deviate from conventional forms in order to realize the ends of politics (order, justice, social harmony, happiness, and liberty). In other circumstances, deviation has the opposite effect. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics provide interesting and unconventional contexts in which to examine the problem of forms and character. Using the political theories of Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Irving Babbitt to analyze the relationship between forms and character in these works, it is apparent that realization of the ends of politics requires moral dexterity. Moral universality becomes evident only in historical particularity.
Cowboy Excellence, Civic Education, and Human Equality in Owen Wister’s The Virginian
Despite the numerous books and articles that have been written on the political philosophy of the American Western or the unique contribution of Western films and novels to American political thought, little time has been spent examining the political theory of the very first Western novel, Owen Wister’s The Virginian. In this article I argue that The Virginianoffers important turn-of-the-century insights on the relationship between equality and human excellence while also providing a model of and an exhortation for civic education as something crucial for the maintenance and success of American democracy. More specifically, I argue that Wister’s seminal story inverts political motifs about the origins of society and offers a radically pro-democratic and anti-individualistic picture of politics in which democratic and republican institutions come to be seen as the vehicle for human flourishing rather than a limitation on human excellence.
Scholars have gestured at the importance of the Augustinian dimension to Thomas More’s Utopia (De optimo reipublicae, 1516)since the early biographers of Thomas More recounted his renowned set of lectures on Augustine’s City of God (De civitate Dei) in the St. Lawrence parish church in London. This article works through the textual resonances in each text looking precisely at superbia to demonstrate how Thomas More engages in the project of educating the reader’s political imagination. The psychagogic effects of Utopia demonstrate More’s participation in an Augustinian tradition where politics plays a key role in securing temporal peace and ameliorating the politically vicious effects of pride. By pushing on the Augustinian dimension of Thomas More’s Utopia rooted in the tempering of political pride, one can affirm the satirical elements of the dialogue and its serious political proposals.
Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America at 50
A symposium on Wilson Carey McWilliam's The Idea of Fraternity in America
Prudence, according to Aristotle, is the “only virtue peculiar to the ruler,” and receives substantial attention in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. Despite this attention, prudence is hard to define and even more difficult to explain in practice. Aristotle offers a similarly enigmatic presentation of the purpose of Book VI: identifying the principles of correct reason. He makes few direct statements about these principles or their relation to the intellect’s capacities. I argue that both presentations are deliberately opaque to caution against straightforward conceptions of realizing the intellect’s purpose—to discern truth. This caution highlights the opacity of prudence and its dependence upon excellences it cannot itself supply, including examined experience and the capacity to discover the correct principles of action.
Copyright (c) 2025 Copyright, by The Political Science Reviewer
This essay examines the role of collective memory in the political theologies of two important American thinkers: Mercy Otis Warren and Abraham Lincoln. Warren, a founding-era Anti-Federalist, wrote one of the first authoritative accounts of the American Revolution in an effort to preserve a collective memory of the Founding, which for her was intertwined with covenantal Christianity. Warren is an important forerunner to Lincoln, whose construction of the collective memory of the Founding (modeled on the ancient Hebrews) set the stage for understanding the present and future of American politics. The essay concludes with a comparison of Warren’s and Lincoln’s accounts of American collective memory and affirms the necessity of these memories in the establishment of civil religion for both thinkers.
The (Catholic?) Soul of the (American) Republic
In Politics III, Aristotle famously argues a point common in ancient accounts of democracies and republics, namely, that “no man can practice virtue who is living the life of a mechanic or laborer.” Cicero, not wholly sharing Aristotle’s view, nevertheless likewise relegates this portion of the population to a secondary role. Modern republics, on the other hand, seem to be animated by a kind of universal call to republican virtue and office, such that early American statesman Charles Carroll observed in 1828 that the “protracted existence” of the American republic depended on the “morality, sobriety, and industry of the people, and on no part more than on the mechanics, forming in our cities the greatest number of their most useful inhabitants.” The well-educated Carroll knew the arguments of the ancients, but his thinking rested on an insight they did not possess: the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition, which presents a fundamental alteration to the older understanding. While he was no “Christian nationalist,” this paper will argue that Carroll’s Catholicism was crucial to his understanding of republicanism.
Moses, Machiavelli, and Augustine's Republicanism
This article explores The City of God’s treatment of Moses, the biblical founder of the Hebrew republic. Moses, we maintain, is for Augustine an exemplar of the “model statesman.” Two sets of contrasts discussed here draw out the significance of Augustine’s treatment of Moses. First is Augustine’s comparison of Moses with Lycurgus, the mythical refounder of Sparta. Second is a comparison of Augustine’s analysis of these figures with Machiavelli’s. Augustine’s Moses emerges from these contrasts as an exemplar of republicanism, defined by honesty, publicity, and humility and as such may still speak to political theorists today.
Copyright (c) 2025 Political Science Reviewer
Alasdair MacIntyre, the Concept of Tradition, and the Catholic University
This paper considers Alasdair MacIntyre’s explication of three rival versions of moral enquiry—encyclopedia, genealogy, and tradition—as a framework for thinking about the modern Catholic university. In applying MacIntyre’s analysis to the contemporary situation, the paper argues that “tradition hires” rather than “mission hires” are required to maintain the identity of an authentically Catholic university. At the same time, the paper contends that those faculty who practice moral enquiry in the mode of encyclopedia or genealogy nonetheless contribute to a thriving university. Finally, the paper draws on the theologian, Yves Congar, to argue that a plurality of traditions exist within the Catholic intellectual tradition.
Augustine and Political Friendship as Metaxy
This article examines Augustine’s concept of political friendship as a counterpoint to liberalism’s reliance on self-interest to achieve political harmony, a premise increasingly doubted for failing to foster civic virtue. Using Eric Voegelin’s notion of metaxy—the “in-between” realm of human existence—it portrays Augustine’s commonwealth as a space where the city of God (love of God) and the earthly city (love of self) converge. Augustine defines a people as rational beings bound by common objects of love, contrasting with liberalism’s distorted Augustinian roots, evident in thinkers like Pascal and Locke. Political friendship, infused with Ciceronian ideas and eschatological depth, balances justice and power through prudent choices. This metaxic commonwealth, both divine and deficient, offers a unique ontological status. Amid liberalism’s crisis, Augustine’s vision—prioritizing justice over power and likening community to a joyful, improvisational "jubilus"—presents a compelling alternative for nurturing political friendship in contemporary society.
Rival Revivals of Aquinas’s Tyrannicide Doctrine
The early-modern resistance theories developed by Juan de Mariana, S.J. (1536-1624) and Francisco Suárez, S.J. (1548-1617), are less novel, and more consistent with Thomas Aquinas’s framework for tyrannicide in the De regno (c. 1267) than leading intellectual historians allow. This article makes the case that Mariana and Suárez clarify, refine, and develop Aquinas’s highly permissive and substantially vague writings on tyrannicide in rival ways. It demonstrates how medieval and ultimately Roman considerations of tyranny and tyrannicide remain present to the seventeenth-century thinkers who define so many modern ideas about rights of revolution, sovereignty, and the relationship between Church and state.
“Parchment Barriers” versus Separation of Functions
This article contends that the burgeoning literature advancing the thesis that the Constitution's separation of powers is a separation of functions enables us to understand more fully the critique of The Federalist against the first state constitutions. The first state constitutions, I argue, differ from the Constitution insofar as the former rely on "parchment barriers" that require both legislators to exercise a virtuous self-restraint and the people to have a watchful spirit while the latter depends on popular self-restraint in deference to the political process. The theoretical reason for this difference between the first state constitutions and the Constitution lies in the fact that whereas the first state constitutions were designed primarily with the end in view of preventing governmental tyranny, the Constitution is designed both to prevent governmental tyranny and ensure effective government.
Xenophon's Political Realism: The Opening of the Cyropaedia
Readers of The Education of Cyrus have long pondered its basic message. In this essay, I argue for the centrality of the first chapter of the work to our understanding of the work as a whole. There, Xenophon indicates that he was led to the study of Cyrus by idealistic hopes engendered by the awe he felt at Cyrus’s accomplishments. Once he had come to understand certain key aspects of Cyrus’s rule, Xenophon ceased to be gripped by those hopes. In this way, the introductory chapter of the Cyropaedia anticipates and encapsulates key teachings of the work as a whole, both about the true character of Cyrus’s excellence at ruling and about Xenophon’s interest in Cyrus. The chapter provides substantial evidence for a realist reading of the Cyropaedia as a corrective to idealistic hopes, particularly the hope that knowledge, if joined with political power, could solve all the problems of political life.